The Silver Dragon (6 page)

He smiled grimly at the rather naive remark.

“You weren’t wearing it?” he asked. “But perhaps that was understandable.” Then, before she knew what was happening, he had taken her by the shoulders, turning her to face the light. “What else was in the case?” he demanded.

“A string of pearls and a jade bracelet.” Her voice sounded very far away to her own ears. “I think they were both artificial
...
”

His strong fingers tightened their grip.

“About as artificial as your amnesia,” he suggested calmly, although there was a flicker of returning anger in his eyes. “You don’t surely expect me to believe in it?” he added scathingly. “Why have you come here?” He shook her a little. “Answer me! Why have you come? We no longer have an audience. Dr. Ordley should be halfway to Nice by now, so we can dispense with the trimmings. There’s no longer any need for pretense. We can speak freely.”

Adele pressed her hands to her face.

“I wish I could!” she cried. “I would give everything I possess to be able to look back—to see the past as it really was, as you know it to be. But I can’t! I’m trapped. Trapped by my own mind. You can’t know what that means, can you? I can’t make you understand and I can’t stay here. Even if I do belong, you don’t want me to stay.” Her eyes were suddenly full and accusing on his. “I have no place in your scheme of things. I’ve felt it right from the beginning. I’ve seen it in your eyes dozens of times in this past hour. I’ve seen your anger and your suspicion and your contempt—even your hatred, in a way. I’ve done something to you, something I can’t hope to know about till my memory returns.”

She gazed at him helplessly, aware of a strange expression in the eyes that looked steadily back at her. It was calculating, yet somehow he seemed vaguely puzzled.

He released her, turning toward the door.

“You needn’t worry unduly about the situation between us,” he assured her stiffly. “You have a most faithful watchdog in Dr. Ordley.”

But John Ordley, Adele was forced to remind herself, wouldn’t be able to stay at the villa forever.

CHAPTER FOUR

Their first meal together h
ad been a farce. Dixon, as befitted a diligent host, had worked hard at the conversation, but he had not quite been able to erase the suggestion of hostility that flowed beneath the surface. They were like boxers sparring in a seemingly friendly bout with a good deal of earnestness in their punches, Adele thought unhappily, and always her husband seemed to emerge the victor.

She was glad when Maria brought in the coffee and they could get up from the table to settle in the deep velvet divans surrounding the fireplace.

Dixon did not sit down. He drank his coffee standing on the hearthrug, saying as he returned his empty cup to the tray, “If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to put in an hour at my desk. I have two rather important letters to send off to London first thing in the morning.”

Relief hit Adele like an enveloping wave, and John’s eagerness to assure him that he must not consider them at all was almost indecent. They sat drinking coffee in silence for several minutes after he had closed the door behind him.

“Well,” John said at last, “how do you feel?”

The kindness in his tone broke down the last barrier of her reserve.

“I feel awful!” Her voice had trembled and there were tears in her eyes, of which she was immediately ashamed. “I just can’t feel that I belong here, John,” she hurried on in order to hide her embarrassment. “I know that I should. I ought to be convinced, but I’m not. There’s a thick gray wall everywhere, even between me and
...
Dixon Cabot.”

“He’s the famous yachtsman, of course,” John remarked gruffly. “And a successful author to boot.
Round the World With Jelida
and
Rhino Country.
I’ve read ’em both. There isn’t much he hasn’t done.” There was a certain amount of envy in the doctor’s pleasant young voice. “Maybe you develop that arrogant look when you’ve been around the world a couple of times and are a literary lion into the bargain.” He got to his feet. “Dash it all, I’m sorry!” he apologized. “I ought not to be talking like this to you, but somehow I can’t imagine you being married to him. I can’t imagine you married to anyone, come to that,” he added.

There was a small awkward silence.

“I wish I knew what to do,” Adele said at last.

He paced to the far side of the room, knowing how impossible it was to do anything.

“Adele,” he asked, “would you consider going back to the clinic? Trying to force yourself to remember like this is no use. It will only retard a cure.”

“A cure?” she questioned bleakly.
“
Is
there a cure?” Her eyes searched his and he could not lie to her.

“Time,” he was forced to admit, “is the only cure. A year, perhaps
...
”

“A year?” She felt shattered. “And probably not even then?”

He bent to throw a log on the fire. It was typical of Cabot, he thought, insisting on the luxury of an open hearth in the English tradition, even here in the south of France.

“I think, if you don’t mind,” Adele said, “I’ll go to bed. I feel as if this has been the longest day of my life.” It was nine o’clock and, if she went now, she would avoid another meeting with Dixon Cabot. It was a cowardly action, no doubt, but her distress was very
real. His dominating personality was something that had to be met with assurance, and she was far from being assured.

In spite of John’s comforting presence, she sensed issues lying just beneath the surface that she would have to face alone.

“I think it might be a wise idea,” John agreed, following her to the door. “I’ll take a quick turn around the garden, I think, before I turn in for the night.” He looked at her directly for the first time. “Try to sleep, Adele,” he said. “There’s nothing we can do about this but wait.”

Swiftly she ran from him up the staircase, and when she had reached her room she heard the crunch of his footsteps on the gravel beneath her window. As the sound faded an overwhelming sense of panic took possession of her. Her tiredness seemed to weigh her down, dragging beneath her eyes, and the doctor’s retreating footsteps left her poised on the edge of a void. When he finally left Les Rochers Blanches she would be completely and utterly alone.

With a desperate sort of determination goading her forward, she opened her door and went back down the broad marble stairs. There was a light burning in the study and she knocked and went in.

Dixon Cabot was seated at his desk, writing, and he finished a sentence and blotted it before he stood up.

“I
...
think I ought to go back to Switzerland,” Adele said breathlessly.

He came around the end of the desk, watching her closely.

“With Dr. Ordley?” he asked.

“No, alone. John would go on to Italy.”

“I see,” he said thinly. “To Brindisi, perhaps?”

She looked back at him, puzzled by a reference she could not hope to understand.

He took out a cigarette and lit it. As he slid the silver snuffer over the dragon’s jaws he said with mock admiration, “You’re an admirable actress. One might almost be tempted to trust you if it were not for the facts.”

Upset by his relentless antagonism and the coldness of his contempt, she rushed back to her room without even bidding him good-night and without knowing whether he would agree to her return to the clinic or not.

Desperately tired as she was, she knew that she would not sleep, but instead of switching on her light she walked to the window and drew the curtains back. The night was dark. There was no moon and very few stars. She could only see as far as the terrace and the headlands rising vaguely beyond it. The Mediterranean looked cold and forbidding now, in contrast with the warm friendly blue sea she had watched that morning, with the sun breaking its surface into a dazzle of joyous golden waves.

How long she stood looking out before she became aware of the light she did not know. It came in two short flashes—in, out; in, out—and she watched it curiously for a moment before she realized that it might be some sort of signal.

There was a short period of darkness before it started again, and this time the message was longer. The flashes were unevenly spaced, some short, some long, and they were punctuated by definite pauses.

The Morse code, she thought, but could make nothing of it. The short signal was repeated. The light must be somewhere near the base of the headland cliffs, she decided, on one side of the narrow sea passage into the bay. Yet there was nothing there, no house, not even a navigation buoy to mark the passage. She had noticed the fact earlier in the day, thinking how isolated they were.

The light flashed again, after a longer interval this time, and she opened the window and stepped out onto the balcony.

Here the night seemed to come closer, cutting her off from the villa. Everything was very still. She could hear the regular swish, swish of the waves as they broke over the pebbled beach, but there was no other sound. The whole universe seemed to be concentrating on the distant flashing light.

Once more it came. In, out; in, out. It flickered and she felt a movement in the room behind her.

“ ‘Tonight,’ ” a mocking voice decoded for her. “Don’t you know your Morse, or have you conveniently forgotten that, too?”

Dixon Cabot came out to stand on the balcony beside her. He had left the room behind them in darkness and she could just make out his tall figure silhouetted against the paler light of the sky as he leaned against the wrought iron balcony rail. For a moment he was no longer looking toward the distant flashing light. Although he c
o
uld not have seen her expression clearly in the darkness, he was
w
illing her to speak the truth.

Now that her own eyes had become accustomed to the gray light she could make out the hard line of his jaw and the strong mouth clamped firmly on his rising impatience.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she gasped. “I saw the light when I came out here. I suppose I opened the window because I wouldn’t be able to sleep right away.” She hesitated, and when he offered no comment she plunged on in an attempt at further explanation. “It seemed strange—a light being out there under the headland. I didn’t think there was a house or a buoy of any sort at that side of the bay.”

He turned his head to follow her puzzled gaze. The light had gone out. They waited in a tense silence for several minutes, but there was no repetition of the signal. Across the bay toward the headlands the night looked blacker than ever in consequence.

“You’re quite right,” he acknowledged stiffly. “There’s nothing over there. Nothing permanent. The light was coming from some craft or other. It was exactly in the middle of the entrance to the bay.”

She drew a deep breath.

“What do you think it was?” she asked.

He greeted her question with a short derisi
v
e laugh.

“Your guess would be as good as mine,” he said, “but it may not take me very long to find out.”

The sound of an engine starting up shattered the night’s calm, and instantly he had vaulted over the balcony rail into the darkness beneath them. She heard him letting himself down by the gnarled stem of the creeper, which clothed the villa wall beneath her window, and stood listening to the swift crunch of his heavy tread as he crossed the gravel to the path that spiraled down to the bay.

For several minutes she did not know what to do. Then the engine cut out, plunging the bay into silence. When it started again it seemed to throb like a distant drumbeat against the night, drawing farther and farther away.

Quickly she turned back into the room and ran down the stairs. There was really nothing she could do, of course, but she did not want to stay up there in the room alone.

The whole house had a deserted air now and she wondered where John had gone. He, too, was out there in the night, walking somewhere along the cliff, perhaps.

Crouching down before the fire, she raked the wood ash together and put on another log. It sparked and spat at her defiantly, but she held out her hands to its warmth, realizing for the first time how cold she was. She must have stood out there on the balcony for over ten minutes, watching the light that she now knew to be a signal. But a signal to whom? And for what purpose?
Until her arrival the villa had been shut up and to all outward appearances deserted, yet someone had come into the bay in a boat and signaled from it under the impression that the message would be picked up and acted on in the right way.

Tonight! The decoded word spun back at her in the quiet room. That had been all. Yet someone had been waiting for that brief message, someone who could see it to the greatest advantage from the windows of Les Rochers Blanches.

Maria? Her brother-
in
-law, Annette’s husband, who, Maria had said, looked after the gardens? Dixon Cabot himself? Dixon’s anger when he had found her out there on the balcony could so easily have been feigned.

Vividly the
stern
face and searching blue eyes took shape before her. He had accused her of duplicity almost outright, but his own calm mastery of the situation could quite easily have hidden guilt.